On Monday evening, one of the nation’s largest insurers released a statement announcing its intention to stop offering individual coverage in most Obamacare markets. Aetna’s announcement, just six paragraphs long, explained that it had lost more than $430 million on the public exchanges since 2014, thanks largely to too many high-cost (read: sick) enrollees.

Aetna regretted its decision, said CEO Mark Bertolini in the statement, but doing business in the Obamacare marketplaces created “significant sustainability concerns.”

It’s the same complaint other insurers have voiced about Obamacare, and it mirrors what Bertolini said just two weeks ago in a second-quarter earnings call. But earlier this year, Bertolini let slip another figure that didn’t make it into Monday’s six paragraphs: Aetna enjoyed a record $6.5 billion in government program premiums in the first quarter.

In other words, doing business with the government isn’t so bad after all. In fact, it’s gotten especially good since Obamacare came along, thanks largely to the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid in most states (but not yet North Carolina.) Medicaid, like Medicare, offers the best of most worlds for insurers – it’s single-payer, government-financed insurance, and it has low enrollee costs. So while insurers like to gripe about the individual Obamacare exchanges, they have no issues with the big Medicaid profits that Obamacare helps provide.

Aetna, at least, seemed to see that big picture not long ago, even calling the Obamacare marketplaces “a good investment” in April. What changed? It could be that last month, the Obama administration blocked Aetna’s proposed $37 billion merger with Humana. On Wednesday, the Huffington Post revealed a July letter from Bertolini to the Justice Department in which he said that if the merger (and its bottom-line benefits) didn’t happen, Aetna would pull out of Obamacare’s exchanges.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Emails obtained by The Associated Press shed new light on the activities of a firm run by Donald Trump's campaign chairman. They show it directly orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine's ruling political party, attempting to sway American public opinion in favor of the country's pro-Russian government.

Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, never disclosed their work as foreign agents between 2012 and 2014 as required under federal law.

The lobbying included attempts to gain positive press coverage of Ukrainian officials in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and AP. Another goal: undercutting American public sympathy for the imprisoned rival of Ukraine's president.

The men have said they were not doing work that required them to register as foreign agents. Neither commented Thursday.

Fuck acting like it's some kind of amazing act of bravery when Republicans say they are not going to vote for their nominee, Donald Trump. You know what? That's the fucking least you can do. In fact, fuck praising some of them for saying they'll vote for Hillary Clinton, as if somehow they had a magical conversion, like they were getting fucked by their boy-toys and, right at orgasm, thought, "Huh. Maybe I should move away from the party that says this is wrong" and used Trump as an excuse to stand tall when every other time they crawled like worms, happily ingesting all the dirt they could shove into their holes.

No, fuck that. You motherfuckers created Donald Trump. You in the GOP made it possible for him to capture the imaginations of the idiot hordes who became idiot hordes because of the steady diet of shit you've fed them for decades. Trump is here because of you, and he needs to be shoved down your throats until you choke, no matter how much you protest against him.

Did you read the actual letter from Republican national security officials? The one where 50 of the most hawkish, hateful cocks ever to give the nation their disease said that they would not vote for Trump? Yeah, read that thing. You'll see lots of lines about Trump's temperament and intelligence, like "Mr. Trump lacks the character, values, and experience to be President. He weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world. He appears to lack basic knowledge about and belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. laws, and U.S. institutions, including religious tolerance, freedom of the press, and an independent judiciary." This is not to mention that "A President must be disciplined, control emotions, and act only after reflection and careful deliberation. A President must maintain cordial relationships with leaders of countries of different backgrounds and must have their respect and trust" and Trump sure as shit ain't any of that. Most of the letter is that kind of "No shit, Sherlock" stuff.

You know what that letter lacks? A single goddamn sentence condemning Trump's promises and policies. They don't condemn him for his language on Muslims and immigrants, they don't say shit about his wall or his ban on people from whatever country hasn't powdered his balls lately. They don't spend any time talking about Trump's approach to ISIS or his promise to bring back torture (something that sadist John Negroponte must love). So what we can conclude is that if a candidate who wasn't dumber than a bucket of hair and who could shut the fuck up sometimes was running on the same foreign policy platform, these shitheels and fucknuts wouldn't have a problem with him. In other words, Trump's just a crappy messenger; the message is fine.

And that's generally the pattern. It's not what Trump's running on that scares off Republicans. It's that he's a prick...

By Joseph Menn, Mark Hosenball and John Walcott
(Reuters) - Hackers targeted the computer systems of presidential candidate Donald Trump and Republican Party organizations as well as Democratic Party networks, sources familiar with investigations into the attacks said.

At least one Trump staff member’s email account was infected with malware in 2015 and sent malicious emails to colleagues, according to one insider for the Republican candidate's campaign and an outside security expert. It was unclear whether or not the hackers actually gained access to campaign computers.

In the past month, U.S. security officials have said that starting last year, hackers infiltrated computers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and her party's congressional fundraising committee.

U.S. officials said they have concluded that Russia or its proxies were responsible, leading to calls by some Democrats and cyber security officials for the Obama administration to blame Russia publicly. Kremlin officials have dismissed the allegations as absurd, but there is anxiety in Washington over the possibility that a foreign power might be using hacked information to meddle in the Nov. 8 U.S. election.

Young voters flee Donald Trump in what may be historic trouncing, poll shows

Susan Page and Fernanda Crescente | USA TODAY
20 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is consolidating the support of the Millennials who fueled Bernie Sanders' challenge during the primaries, a new USA TODAY/Rock the Vote Poll finds, as Republican Donald Trump heads toward the worst showing among younger voters in modern American history.

The survey shows Clinton trouncing Trump 56%-20% among those under 35, though she has failed so far to generate the levels of enthusiasm Sanders did — and the high turn-out that can signal — among Millennials.

- snip -

The findings have implications for politics long past the November election. If the trend continues, the Democratic Party will have scored double-digit victories among younger voters in three consecutive elections, the first time that has happened since such data became readily available in 1952. That could shape the political affiliations of the largest generation in American history for years to follow.

In the new survey, half of those under 35 say they identify with or lean toward the Democrats; just 20% identify with or lean toward the Republicans. Seventeen percent are independents, and another 12% either identify with another party or don't know.

Trump's weakness among younger voters is unprecedented, lower even than the 32% of the vote that the Gallup Organization calculates Richard Nixon received among 18-to-29-year-old voters in 1972, an era of youthful protests against the Vietnam War.